For centuries, the city’s Sephardim adhered to Jewish law within the community, but also had secular lives in the relatively lax Dutch state.
Tag: Public Streets
Elvis’s Missing Belt: Tel Aviv, Israel
“As a teenager, I also worked at HaMeshulash for several months. It’s quite possible that I was the worst waiter in the history of the café.”
A Statue Gives Romans a Voice: 2021, Rome, Italy
The people of Rome have been leaving notes on the Pasquino statue for over 500 years. And this practice continued in the pandemic, fortunately.
What Folklore Erases: Under Columbus, Georgia
The current owner of the Lion House is happy to let rumors about his property’s basement passageway simmer.
Literary and Manual Labors: Pittsfield, Massachusetts
“I have been building some shanties of houses …,” wrote Melville to Hawthorne, “and likewise some shanties of chapters and essays.”
A Quiet Disaster: Mexico City, Mexico
Apocalyptic writers would be surprised by the suddenness with which Mexico City, during the pandemic, took on the guise of a ghost town.
The New Silk Road: Dordoi Bazaar in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
At the largest bazaar in Central Asia, an informal secondhand market has become something like a metropolis unto itself.
The Floating Park: Parc de Belleville, Paris
“It is rare, on a summer evening in Paris, to find this sort of quiet along with the sensation of having the city at your feet.”
The Enduring City: Jakarta, Indonesia
In the parts of the city left behind is a Jakarta free from the globalized sameness of so many of the world’s megacities.
One Border, Two Walls: Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora
The sun is setting behind the Tohono O’odham Nation Reservation, and ...
“There Is Always a Norther North”: Highway 1, Alaska
There’s a fire burning by Swan Lake. For the sixth time in the last 20 years ...
“Kingdom of Dolls”: Sonneberg, Germany
In her mid-19th-century children’s book, Memoirs of a Doll, Julie Gouraud warns her readers not to unstitch their dolls looking for origins and inner workings ...
Fill the Halls: Space and Possibility in Lahore, Pakistan
Lahore today can feel like a city of security checks and gated passages, tall walls and ...
Risky Choices: Women and Cabs in Hyderabad, India
The arrival of app-based ride-hailing in Indian cities has made a significant difference in the way the middle class, especially young men and women ...
The Afronaut Archives: Reports from a Future Zambia
“Most Westerners don’t even know whereabouts in Africa we are.” So said ...
Casa Mueller’s Ghost: Displaced Afro-Caribbean History in Panama City
I’m standing on a foot-wide cement island in the middle of the bustling Avenida ...
You Can Call It “The Cuban”: Miami, Florida
The fall of 2018 in Miami saw the grand opening of an institution you would’ve thought the city already had. The ...
Smiling Donors, Bored Recipients: Free Food In America
People lining up for free food are often tired, bored, and shabbily dressed ...
Shangri-La in the Mud: Vancouver’s Squatters
If you wandered downtown Vancouver during the 2010 Olympics, perhaps you were struck by an incongruous architectural juxtaposition ...
Casa de Pueblo: Recovering Spain’s Rural Past
I wish I had an answer, but the truth is, I don’t know what I’m going to do with this dilapidated, 17th-century historic estate that has been vacant since the 1960s ...